


9 Times Lydia Martin Truly Saw Scott McCall

by wouriqueen (MaggieBrown)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Major Character Death is Allison, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, mostly canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 04:57:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4947565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaggieBrown/pseuds/wouriqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She remembers each and every single one of those times he stood out to her. In these moments she could see him more clearly than ever and she'd feel it in her chest - a powerful pull born from ... oh, such different things. Greed, hope, faith, love.</p><p>When she thinks about her journey by his side, it's those defining moments - for him sometimes, for her always - that come to mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	9 Times Lydia Martin Truly Saw Scott McCall

**1.**

The first time it happens, he’s on the lacrosse field for trials, besting her boyfriend. The kid is unpopular, unknown, invisible even. She knows his name anyway – Lydia knows everyone. But she also knows he’s not _important_. Or at least, he’s never been before. However there he is, leaping his way right up to Jackson’s status, the king to her queen-bee, and Lydia purses her lips. School is a battleground and she’s always been very dedicated to the task of dominating it, so she sidles up next to him at lunch, touches him _just so_ before a big match, and watches his budding romance with Allison with an eye both fond and competitive. Wearing masks is only worth it if you grab the prize for yourself. And if Jackson can’t be _it_ anymore? If his title goes to Scott instead? Well, she wouldn’t date that _boy_ – she’s not _that_ power-hungry. But the world needs to know that she _could_.

The second Allison lets go, she kisses him in Coach’s office. Marking him. _Scott McCall is well within my reach_ , her smudged lipstick proclaims as she walks across the field to where Jackson’s standing. _Don’t you dare lose_ , is what her boyfriend is to understand when she touches up the make-up she obviously knew was ruined.

For the girl who plays pretense, the new co-captain of the lacrosse team is just a very pretty, shiny medal she needed to hang up on her hunting board.

 

 

**2.**

The second time it happens, her life is nothing like it was back then – she’s still lost in the fog that descended upon her the night Peter almost ate her life out. Scott’s waiting for the concert set up by Professor Blake to begin, standing behind a crowd of people blissfully unaware of what will happen. _Something_ is upon them – inevitable, she tells herself, although she doesn’t know what. She has yet to learn how to decipher the low humming settling in her bones, her stomach and her lungs. She doesn’t know that it’s a warning of sorts, a prelude to the screeching scream that will tear its way through her body when a life falls prey to the supernatural. Still, she knows something is about to happen, her flesh and her brain are both telling her so. However she refuses to keep on finding the corpses. It’s a nightmare she will fight. She refuses having to go to sleep at night with thoughts of _what if_ and _just a moment sooner_ again.

She refuses it, but she doesn’t know how to prevent it.

He’s standing in front of her, shoulders tense, worried eyes scanning the room as though if he wrapped everyone up in his gaze, they would be safe. She sees the way he scrapes his blunt fingernails against the palm of his hands, imagines the supernatural strength sleeping inside of him as he flexes his forearms in frustrated anticipation. He could help. Someone with his abilities could free her from the death cycle she’s found herself trapped in.

“I thought you were going home.” He says it like reproach as she comes to stand next to him.

“…I can’t.” She swallows around the knot in her throat. “Look, I don’t know why I’m the one that keeps finding the bodies. But maybe, if I just stop trying to fight it … I’d find them before it happens. Maybe with enough time for someone like you to do something about it.”

He looks at her like he was a man with a parched throat and she’d just given him water.

“You get me the time and I’ll do something about it. I swear to god, I will.”

It strikes her then, the way he remains calm despite the worry visibly twisting inside his head, his brown eyes full of a determination she could not have imagined from this boy mere months ago. _He’s making something of his curse_ , she thinks. And it’s a crazy hope that catches her by the throat then, so powerful she grabs his hand to make sure he’s real. There might be a way. She might not be able to reverse whatever was done to her that night on the lacrosse field, but there might be a way to make sense of it. Maybe all she has to do for that to happen is to choose who she wants to be. Life could make sense again, she tells herself, as he squeezes her hand back, a silent promise in his eyes. She’s scared of course, but if Scott did it, she can do it too.

 

 

**3.**

The Darach dead and the Alpha Pack destroyed, it’s easy to fall back into old patterns. Lydia finds it reassuring. She’s not the same person she used to be, assuredly – the strawberry blonde no longer feels the need to hide her intelligence, run from her powers or shy away from real relationships by putting up walls around her. However, she’s not tormented by thoughts of right and wrong. Falling into Aiden’s arms was easy even while he was antagonizing her friends. It’s easier now that they’re allowing him and his brother to remain around the pack. Carelessness has always been her favorite mask anyway. It’s so simple to slip it back, to ignore any thoughts of the blood she knows is tainting the boy’s hands and instead focus on their connection. He adores her, and although she would never admit it out loud, it makes her feel good. So she’s willing to shut down the very non-supernatural voice inside her head chanting Vernon Milton Boyd’s name.

The expedition in the woods to save Malia from her father’s gun is half a disaster and Lydia senses a pattern. Scott goes off on his own, so do Isaac and Allison, and she manages to step inside a jaw trap. Stiles saves her – that’s when she hears it. Scott, who couldn’t shift anymore, is roaring out like the alpha she knew he was, rallying his troops and establishing the hierarchy all at once. She’s never heard anything like this, but it’s a thrill, like pure power crackling through the air. She loves it. She loves it because she still loves power and she loves it because now people can _hear_ what she saw in the ballroom that night – how a boy broken by a beast stood up taller than ever.

The epiphany, though, is when she sees Scott step out of the woods with Malia in his arms, covered in his jacket. _This is what we did_ , she tells herself. This girl is here, and had it not been for them, she wouldn’t be.

Power could also be used like this.

After that, she’s firmer, with others but mostly with herself. She lets herself forgive Aiden, but she stops pretending what he did is not real. She stops hushing up the voice in her head reminding her of the blood on his hands, because now she _knows_ what the fact that Aiden was an alpha means. He had power and chose to crush a teenage boy with it. She lets herself forgive, but she doesn’t forget. Because eventually it all becomes more than salvaging her sanity or the people she loves. It becomes about being able to look at herself in the mirror.

She doesn’t forget how _Scott_ used his power either.

 

 

**4.**

She’s painting Aiden and the music stops. Or rather, there was music and now there are voices. They’re whispering urgently through the speakers, low enough that only the ears of a banshee could make the words apart. They’re not real words either – not of a language Lydia has ever learnt anyway. However, she _knows_ their meaning, somehow, although perhaps the right word to describe that feeling is that she _remembers_. They call back vague memories she knows aren’t truly hers – or maybe they’re memories she doesn’t have yet. They pull strings inside of her she didn’t know existed, and the melody they play between her bones lead her straight to Stiles’ house and to his room. Red string everywhere, glaring in the dark. Something is wrong, very wrong. Scott gets there with Isaac, seemingly lost – he didn’t even _call the Sheriff_ – but together they manage to get moving. It’s a long night. She knows she can do this now. She trusts herself, follows the voices.

It doesn’t work.

She was so sure.

She was so sure, and as she looks around the old basement, she _knows_ there is something there. She can feel Stiles, and … something else. The Sheriff is out of his mind with worry and there’s nothing she can say because she has failed. There’s no time to explore this further. They find him at the hospital – Melissa and Scott’s dad brought him back.

Lydia had just started believing in herself but now she feels like she’s back to square one. It burns, the shame and the disappointment. It’ll take her a while to believe again, to not shut out the voices. She doesn’t miss Scott’s hands the whole time though. The way they reach for her arms and her shoulders every time she lags behind, his whole body turned towards her, like a shield, without ever intruding her space or actually touching her. It doesn’t really ease the pain, now and after but …

… she remembers the gentleness.

 

 

**5.**

When Scott sinks his claws in her neck, it _hurts_ and she has to refrain herself from squirming. She’s not afraid though, she trusts him. Something between their three minds lights up, some kind of dormant connection set ablaze by the alpha’s power and, maybe, by her own. It moves her – not that the ritual strengthened the link, but that it was already there.

_It was already there._

That is when Lydia realizes – this is my pack. This is my family.

This is my alpha.

She wants Scott to know it too. To know he’s strong enough to break free of those bounds – _this is my alpha_ – and to know she’ll be there to remind him, always – _this is my family_. He can’t feel the way they are tangled up together in life and death, not the way she could, but she reminds him they are pack.

He frees Stiles.

Finding Allison has been one of the best things to happen in the banshee’s life and she used to think nothing would compete with it in a while, but there she is, with all these people, all this warmth. In the distance, Stiles throws the chessboard aside. Lydia looks at Scott and she’s so proud he made it. So happy he brought them all together.

 

 

**. . .**

_It gets really cold afterwards, endless corridors after endless corridors. The voice behind her clings to her eardrums like glue, echoing in her head over and over again. Lydia never thought something could be scarier than what she’d already been through – a stranger using her own dreams to terrorize her. Strange voices invading her head, drowning out the world and taking over her lungs until all she could do was scream. Death seconds away as the rope crushes her throat, her teacher whispering venom in her ear._

_But now she does. The pale, macabre caricature of her friend is chasing her in between walls, his distorted voice bouncing against the wet stone, and it’s worse than any nightmare. It lasts for an eternity but finally she can feel them, she can feel Scott, Stiles – the real one, not this sinister costume the nogitsune is inhabiting – and Isaac, even though their bond is so weak and –_

_Blood freezes in the banshee’s veins. She shouldn’t be here. She left a message, so Allison shouldn’t –_

_Everything is blurry. The sound of swords clanging, arrows slicing the air open, Scott and Stiles, Stiles, weaker than ever, the cold ground beneath her knees as she falls with him and then it’s here, the humming in her bones. It’s more like a rumbling this time, and it comes with a scalding hot swell in her chest. She screams, she_ screams _, and is it the wailing of a banshee, or her own despair tearing her apart? She’ll never know. Lives ending usually feel like a spark lit up for a second before being smothered, a swift transition from barely something to nothing. But Allison,_ Allison _, she was a wildfire in Lydia’s heart and when she goes, it’s brutal. The girl’s mouth fills with the taste of ashes, sobs wreaking havoc through her body._

_She drags Stiles out of the tunnels, shaking and half blind with tears and she sees them together, Scott and Allison. It’s like she’s sleeping in his arms. It’s only a moment though, because then Chris picks up his daughter’s corpse out of Scott’s arms and she sees the boy’s hands grapple at the air. He doesn’t want to let go, but he knows he doesn’t have the right to demand anything._

_They don’t have the right to demand anything._

_Lydia learns that day that the death of a loved one leaves a burning brand on your guts, even when you’re a banshee._

_She knows though – and it’s a sick kind of comfort of which she’s very ashamed – that there is at least another one of her friends who will be feeling the burn and the loss as vividly as her. Scott will be there, walking down memory lane with her again and again. There will be company in tragedy, and it’s so selfish but she’s relieved._

**6.**

They barely have time to mend their broken bones. Barely have time to learn how to walk again before they’re out on the road trying to save another friend. Everyone is hanging on as best as they can. Everyone knows life cannot stop, should not stop because Allison is gone.

Lydia doesn’t quite agree.

However, Derek’s life is on the line so she follows her friends into yet another deathtrap. The plan is one of the worst they’ve ever had, but by this point they can’t afford to leave anyone behind, so no one really talks about how stupid it is to attack a hunter in her home. Luckily, Araya is not the worst they could have expected – she doesn’t burn them alive, doesn’t cut them in half. Unluckily, she’s far from being the best either, and before they know it Kira is manhandled in front of a control panel, and Lydia into a chair in which she’s bound with electric wires. The Calaveras want answers to their absurd questions. Lydia feels like they just want to torture Scott. She’s terrified – she can feel the electricity crackling ever so slightly against her skin, wonders about how well-isolated those wires are and squirms as the hairs on her arms stand up. But she’s also _terrified_ because Scott is literally begging Kira to hurt him so he can save her life and soon he’s screaming louder and louder. She pulls against the wires, instinct more than reason as if she could throw herself against him and somehow make it stop.

It ends, eventually, like everything. Soon it’s the sandy road again, ghosts from the past resurfacing, the night, monsters in the dark. Derek is not okay, but he’s alive. They go home, and death greets them soon after like a creature waiting with open jaws. Weeks later, the Benefactor is gone and she’s sitting with Meredith on the ratty couch of the police station, talking in quiet voices even though they might not need them to hear each other.

“Not all monsters do monstrous things.”

She’s thinking of Scott, of course. Assassins, _humans_ , have bloodied the streets of Beacon Hills. They haven’t saved everyone, but as Lydia says the words, she remembers Scott in Mexico, willingly taking the pain then breaking the wires. They haven’t saved everyone, but Lydia Martin thinks Scott McCall may very well be a hero.

 

 

**7.**

Weeks go by, then months, without any major supernatural-related event in sight. They settle back in normalcy as if they’d never left it – it’s a lie of course, the nightmares are there, the readiness to run or fight buzzing underneath their skin. But they’ve always done their best to protect their teenage lives from the madness, always tried to show up at school most days than not, to study, to keep on breathing. This new, normal life doesn’t take them by surprise and for a while, things are good. They party, even. Who would have known? The last time Lydia found herself in a place with a crowd, music and beer, Malia had been raging out in the basement and Liam, going berserk across the woods. Her friends are happy. She feels less lonely, Kira and Malia slowly filling up Allison’s vacancy, Stiles always solid by her side.

Scott is so bright it’s blinding.

Lydia doesn’t look her feelings in the face, doesn’t acknowledge their existence, preferring them her more-tangible-by-the-day connection with Jordan. The banshee knows it’s not necessarily a good idea. She doesn’t know where it’s going either but for the first time in a long while she feels like she has time to explore and see.

She’s wrong of course, and when things start falling apart, they fall _hard_. Their classmates start dying left and right, and it’s rough, especially after so much time. They think they can handle it, but for the first time they can’t find anything. The deaths do not bring any relevant clue or way to beat the adversary. Stiles and Malia are distant, Kira loses control, Liam is in over his head – thankfully, Theo is there to balance things out. Every muscle in Scott’s body is visibly tensed with stress. She doesn’t worry about him too much though. He’s strong. She knows that, maybe better than anyone else. He’ll be okay.

The hardest part is probably seeing how much these kids resemble them. They’ve been changed without their consent, thrown into a world they barely understand. Lydia remembers the confusion and the loneliness, the fear and the pain, and when she looks into Scott’s eyes they’re like a mirror of her own. Maybe they won’t be able to save them – quiet admission to themselves in the dead of the night – but they’re the only ones who can make a difference between their own experiences and these children’s. They should do it right, in case it turns out to be the last thing they can do for them.

When Scott barges into his room after seeing Kira at the police station, Lydia knows what he’s about to do. She’s upset. That is exactly how they’ve been treated and she would’ve never expected Scott, of all people, to do the same. He, of all people, should understand. She thinks he does. Is that better or worse? She doesn’t know.

“You could’ve hurt him, Scott…! Seriously hurt him.” She didn’t mean to make accusations, but here they are.

“I need to find Liam” is his only answer.

He’s not looking at her, not really, gaze flickering up and down and for a brief moment Lydia sees the cracks in the armor, the shaky fingers and lost eyes.

It’s because he always believed people could be saved that they went and saved them, though. It’s because he’s never wanted to back down or let himself be used that they fought back. That’s how they made it.

Lydia sees the vulnerability in her alpha’s eyes, and she looks around at her pack, at Malia’s closed expression and Stiles’ shifty eyes, Kira glaringly absent. She sees his vulnerability, but the thought that he too might fall apart fills her with such dread that she doesn’t know what to do.

So she does nothing.

For the first time, Lydia Martin wishes she hadn’t noticed.

**8.**

Lydia sees Scott again after Eichen House.

The whole thing has been a nightmare, as one would expect. Theo was a traitor, but she couldn’t even dwell on that because after he was done with her all she could do was lie on the floor. For a while the banshee’s in a weird headspace. It’s like she’s floating through blurry memories, the only soundtrack to her reverie being the sound of fighting, roars, claws embedded in flesh stuck on replay. The only tangible thing, the certainty that Scott’s light has gone out.

He’s dead.

She’s cold inside, so _cold_ it burns, consumed from the inside. She can’t even scream.

As it turns out, Lydia can’t feel anything anymore, because when she comes about, carefully maintaining her catatonic stance, she finds the voices are gone. The humming in her bones, quieted out. Her friends’ sparks, absent. Not snuffed out – absent. She can’t feel anything anymore. Whatever Valack is doing to her would’ve been a blessing, a year ago.

All she knows now is that _Scott is dead_ , the others might be dying too, and she might never know.

She tries to escape several times, she fails. The burns from the electric rods are a glaring purple on her skin. Somehow Valack gets on the Doctors’ bad side and disappears. Deaton gets her – takes her to Scott’s house. She cries the whole ride, the weight of what she lived finally crashing down on her. She cries even harder when she finds Malia there, heavily wounded and asleep with her hands clutching an equally sleeping Kira. And there’s –

“Sc – Scott… ? Scott, you – ”

He looks broken, brittle bones and weary muscle against her chest as she runs to hug him. The blood seeping from his wounds stains her clothes when she presses him against the wall behind, a sob breaking out of her lips. She can see the apologies Scott’s about to make dance in his eyes but she doesn’t want any of that, not anymore.

“Are you okay?” she frantically asks over and over.

He frowns confusedly. The strawberry blonde runs her hands across his face covered in cuts. Why haven’t they healed? Lydia remembers a rest stop and its dirty washroom, black blood gushing from an open wound. She squeezes his arms in her hands, grounding him as much as she’s grounding herself.

“It’s okay, I’m healing” he says, even as he slouches against the wall, watery eyes straying somewhere behind her. She makes her voice softer.

“… Scott. Are you okay?”

_Are you broken? Can I fix you? Is it too late?_

The ninth time Lydia Martin notices Scott McCall, she remembers he’s only human.

 

 **9.**  

They slowly work it out.

There have been a lot of secrets, lies and disappointment so they take their time. Stiles and Malia take some time for themselves but they get back together fast enough and no one who saw the miserable way they looked at each other is surprised. Scott and Stiles – it’s hard. Long, painful and desperate at the same time, like they just _need_ to be attached at the hip again but every step they take towards each other feels like dragging themselves naked across a pool of barbs. Lydia watches them in pain but there is nothing she can do except pray this isn’t the end for them. She’s still struggling to sleep, the feel of needles and electricity vivid in her flesh and muscle memory making her fight against invisible restraints at night.

Scott is his usual caring, nurturing self. He’s doing okay. Or at least, he looks like he is. Lydia found out that all this time she thought she could tell, well she couldn’t. It really hurts so she grabs his hand one warm afternoon, gentle fingers sliding between his own like he’d done almost a year before when he’d shown her they could take control of what Peter had done to them. They’re sitting on his bed, sharing AP Bio notes. Kira is not here because she and Scott are giving themselves some time. It’s not to “think about it” – Kira has already made up her mind, she needs to focus on herself and Scott is too exhausted inside to be able to handle a relationship just yet. They simply don’t want to rush things out and ruin their friendships in the process. When the banshee grabs her friend’s hand, he looks at her with half a smile, a question dancing in his eyes. She doesn’t say anything though, instead dragging him out of the room, out of the house and all the way to the school’s library.

He’s bewildered, somewhere between not understanding and not wanting to, but she doesn’t give him the time to decide whether he wants to run from this or not. The redhead wordlessly places both her hands against his chest as they stand in the middle of the room, the screams and crashing shelves echoing in her head like on the day Theo took her. Silence stretches until Lydia asks: “Did it hurt?”

“Did _what_ hurt?” He’s absently staring at the front door behind her.

“…You know what.” She tangles her fingers in his T-shirt, rumpling the fabric. “Why did you let him?” she asks again, voice barely above a whisper. “Did you – did you think it would be better? Did you think you deserved it?” He remains quiet. It’s like they’re reading a score – Lydia plays the notes and Scott, the silences. But silences can be so heavy. They can squash words, roll them up and make knots out of them – tight and thick knots that swell in your throat and kill your voice. Lydia knows that, she remembers how she used to choke on all the unsaid, alone with her voices. So the banshee picks at Scott’s strings, untangles the words and the feelings until he lets them loose, until they’re sitting on the wooden floor hunched up against each other, murmuring about guilt, pain and self-hatred. About the _exhaustion_ Lydia now sees, running up the alpha’s arms and legs like poisoned ivy and wearing him further and further down until he can’t see the worth in standing back up. Lydia coaxes it all out, tears streaming down her face. They talk about her too, about the snakes curling under her skin like an ingrained memory and the fear of being caught again. About how she felt him _die_.

But what Lydia will remember, above the heartbreak and the tears, is Scott’s warm body against her. Her hands are tangled in his clothes and she can feel the flesh and the bones, the fragile skin around the powerful muscles. She shakes with every breath, with every sob of his as if they’re going through her too and the alpha’s tears drip down on her face. She feels her friend’s hand on her waist, gentle and comforting even as he’s telling her how he’s falling apart. Scott McCall has never before been so real, so complete and Lydia wants to absorb him, carry his pain and swallow his breath.

She knows she can’t, though. Not before he’s convinced again he’s worthy of it, not before the gaping wounds are closed and the burnt bridges, mended. None of them has bones solid enough for the moment so she saves that kiss for later. Later, when they can stand again – and she knows they will because Scott McCall and Lydia Martin never stay down – she’ll face his brightness once and for all instead of turning her eyes away. She can only hope that Scott’s nose against her cheek, his thumb smoothing the skin inside her wrist, are promises that he’ll do the same.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta reader for her advice! You can find her [ here ](http://cloudsandground.tumblr.com)
> 
> As for me, you can find me [ over here ](http://wouriqueen.tumblr.com).


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